--You may be surprised by how much we have learned about life on Earth by observing some of the most distant objects we find in the universe: supernovae. These are the brief, but brilliant, explosions that end the life of certain types of stars and can…

--It’s ten seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve, but by whose watch? Like all standards, measurements of time are arbitrary, and only as good as the precision of each ‘tick.’ As no clock is perfect, each will eventually speed up or slow down, making…

--You are most likely reading this article on a computer, and as you scroll down the page, you may decide to briefly switch over to Facebook or Twitter to type a quick status update. We usually do not stop to think that the ease with which we can do…

--Mosquitoes, and the diseases they carry, have been a threat to human health for millennia. Despite advances in research and efforts in disease control, mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever still ravage much of the developing world,…

A study published this summer in the journal Science found, for the first time, significant success in preventing HIV infection using a vaginal microbicidal gel [1]. This finding is an important step in our understanding of HIV prevention and in curbing…

In 2008, twenty-seven years into the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, an estimated 25 million people had died from the disease, and approximately 33.4 million people were living with HIV/AIDS [1]. Although current antiretroviral treatment can greatly slow the…

It takes a life every 30 seconds and sickens almost 250 million people a year… but this is no AIDS epidemic; no newly emerged disease that medical science is scrambling to control.  Malaria has been a scourge of mankind throughout recorded history,…

What do the world’s “bottom billion” — the approximate number of the world’s citizens earning less than $1.25 USD per day — have in common? Aside from poor living conditions, malnutrition, and political voicelessness, they are also all more likely to…

Ellen ’t Hoen is the executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool Foundation and was the Senior Advisor on Intellectual Property for UNITAID, a global health funding agency hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. She was also the…

In many ways, tuberculosis (TB) is an unusual disease, but it is certainly not uncommon. It is an infectious disease caused by transmittable bacteria. However, about nine out of ten people who are infected after exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis,…